Boy Kloves is finally home. After spending years in London and New York City, the designer returned to Los Angeles in hopes of building the next great American menswear line rooted in California heritage.
With a degree from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London and experience at brands like Carolina Herrera, Oscar de la Renta, Jason Wu and Bode, it's only up from here for Boy Kloves and his namesake brand. "I want to synthesize the techniques and care for craft I learned there, with this love of classic resort wear, to create new vibrant and exciting menswear that can be those standout pieces in someone's wardrobe," he tells PAPER.
For his first collection, Boy Kloves explored the history of California surf culture, "taking Endless Summer iconography and looking at it through a contemporary lens," the designer explains. "While designing this season, I looked at vintage ads from my own archive of '70s surfer magazines, mixing it with silhouettes of cruise wear popularized on TV shows like The Love Boat. As a kid, growing up at the beach in California, it always crept into the way I myself dressed. In elementary school, I wore my wetsuit shoes to school with my uniform and have been an avid collector of classic Hawaiian shirts for years. Now in my twenties, I’m putting that to work in our first season."
The debut collection incorporates upcycled textiles — vintage Hawaiian fabric, deadstock terrycloth, sand, surfboards and hand-painted silks — as some of the construction materials, since the brand committed to sustainability and crafting everything in Southern California.
Below, PAPER chatted with Boy Kloves about his formal come-up in the fashion industry, surf culture and what it'll take to be the next great American menswear line.
I love to hear people's experiences coming up in the fashion industry. Do you remember the moment you got your start?
I started interning back when I was 16 in high school. I actually had to be driven to my first interview because I was getting my license the following week. My first internship was at a company called Band of Outsiders based in LA. Also in high school, I got the opportunity to work for Juan Carlos Obando.
Do you attribute a lot of what you learned to your time at CSM?
Those years were invaluable years for me; I was able to learn from incredible tutors and guest lecturers. I credit a lot of my work ethic to tutors like Patrick Lee Yow and Stephanie Cooper. I also had the opportunity to be guest taught by people like Charles Jeffrey and have projects that worked with brands like Kenzo, Givenchy and Louis Vuitton. Being in London also exposed me to so many different facets of fashion and culture that stretched my creativity beyond what I developed in LA. After the project with Charles Jeffrey back at university, I was given the opportunity to work for set designer and artist Gary Card to work on the sets and other projects for Charles Jeffrey’s next season.
Throughout college, I worked for a number of brands including Oscar de la Renta and Carolina Herrera during the summers. I learned so much from each job. Carolina Herrera was my first taste of New York fashion. It was so incredible to be able to work for such a titan of the industry. The team was incredible and really involved me and made sure I got to see all sides of the design process. I got to see how the atelier worked, sat in on production fittings and saw a full collection being designed from idea to reality over several months.
Central Saint Martins has a year dedicated to interning in the industry between your second and final year. I spent mine at Jason Wu and then later Bode. Bode was a really interesting experience, because I was really able to see how a company can grow so fast. I got to see the first New York store opening, participation in the Woolmark Prize and the everyday ins and outs of building a small brand. It was amazing to see Emily and such a small team build a huge menswear brand. I have always been into sustainability in my own work in university and having the opportunity to work for a company that was able to use upcycled textiles to create garments that would be sold in department stores, showed me it could be done at a large scale.
In this debut collection, what is it about California surf culture that you're drawn to?
Aesthetically, there is just such a wealth and history of interesting photography, graphics, print and culture that spans and evolves over a number of years. I remember what first struck me was the ease that was brought into formalwear evident in this genre. Every few issues [of '70s surfer magazines], there would be pictures of galas or award ceremonies that showed surfers in suits that inevitably were relaxed beyond a dress code of an event in a different industry in the '70s and '80s would require. Hawaiian shirts and tank tops were introduced under baggy suits. Some went shirtless, wearing just a flower lei. That juxtaposed next to pages of advertisements or photo essays of surfers in brightly colored board shorts, airbrushed t-shirts or intricately constructed multi-colored wetsuits really caught my eye and developed an affinity for this aesthetic.
How were you able to translate that energy through your personal, contemporary point of view?
For our first few projects, I really wanted to capture the joy and lightness that I associated with these '70s brands. It’s a touch of old surf brands, a touch of Endless Summer and a touch of Beach Blanket Bingo. We released a video that announced the brand launch that was shot through a cooler so you could get snippets of the collection on beachgoers pulling branded sodas from below.
For the lookbook, I wanted it to feel really fluid. We actually did it in my office space and got to play around with some of my boards and other bits. We looked at a lot of press tour photos from old Surf World tours. Bruce Weber also did some fantastic shoots back in the '90s in California on the beach around the Santa Monica Pier, which is right where I grew up. We tried to channel a little bit of that energy into the space so it gave it some movement beyond a typical lookbook.
Tell me more about the clothes themselves! Where are you sourcing the fabrics, and are you manipulating fabrics in any new ways?
A lot of our fabrics are deadstock. The cotton Hawaiian prints are a mix of vintage damaged shirts that we give new life to by patchworking them together with deadstock yardage to make our own lengths of fabric. We then cut our patterns out of the new textile we create. Our solids are mostly sourced from deadstock fabric found here in downtown LA, and some of our denim came from larger design houses giving away bolts of fabric.
The knit and last two shirts are prints that I designed myself. Endless Summer is a quintessential surf classic that influenced a whole movement within the progression of the Hawaiian shirt. The poster inspired these now highly collectible cotton shirts featuring block colors with silhouettes of surfers on them. I wanted to put my own spin on it by using airbrushing techniques for the backgrounds and block printing on the silhouettes to create my own silk textile. The airbrushing brought it to a contemporary place and also connected it to board-making for me.
How did the '70s surfer magazine inspiration find its way in the silhouettes, prints and patterns?
Some of the zigzag stitching present on our white silk Club Shirt and the cotton Aloha shirts are loose interpretations of wetsuit stitching, which I initially started to develop in my graduate collection back at Saint Martins. I really wanted to bring in some real textures of surfing to round out the collection. When thinking of styling, I had this idea of covering boots and making hats made out of sand so they almost felt like they were of the beach.
Similarly, I wanted to figure out how to make a new graphic tee; that’s where the boards came in. You can’t really draw inspiration from where I did without addressing the wealth of inspiration when it comes to graphic design and t-shirts associated with surf culture. We cut up damaged boards and then put our own graphics on top like surf decals to create our version of a tee.
What are your next steps?
I am working on our next collection, which I am super excited about. It will be a continuation of exploring all that I love with California and surfing with a slightly different angle.
And what do you think it takes for you to be the next great American Menswear line?
My aesthetic has always leaned into heavy color, print and materiality, and I hope to bring a little bit of that into the arena here. I strive to make the piece in your closet that you want to wear when you want to stand out. Growing up loving fashion, I had a deep love for Gianni Versace, Dries Van Noten and Patrick Kelly, and they all still hold a place in the back of my mind when I am designing. I think it’s time for a really bold fun menswear brand to make its presence known in America, and I think it could be mine.
Photography: Yuval Ozery
Creative direction and set design: Boy Kloves
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